This invention relates to a camera control apparatus and, more particularly to a camera control apparatus and method which controls image-sensing direction (panning/tilting) and image-sensing magnification (zooming).
Conventionally, as a means to remote-control panning/tilting and zooming of a video camera, operation levers, a joy stick, push-button switches corresponding to two-axial rotation or display of such tools with a pointing device such as a mouse, are known. For example, a rotation angle or angular velocity is controlled by a lever angle, or rotation in an upward/downward/rightward/leftward direction is made by a button being pressed. Similarly, zoom control is made by using a button for designating a wide-end (pantoscope) position or a tele-end (telescope) position.
With the camera operation means or control device, a camera is panned/tilted in accordance with operation of the pan/tilt control. This is suitable for operation while observing a monitor screen image; however, it is not convenient when moving to a target position is away from the current camera position.
To solve this problem, a controller can be provided to directly input respective pan and tilt angles as numerical values. The controller determines movement of the camera to the target positions. However, in this case, an operator cannot intuitively determine an area within a panning/tilting range, i.e., an image area which comes into an image-sensing view.